It’s Really NOYB

Increasingly, I think that medical questionnaires are seeking information that falls squarely into the category of “None of Your Business.”

To wit:  Our dear dermatologist of many years recently retired.  He himself hadn’t seen the sun in eons but he forgave us our years of using that wonderful “baby-oil, iodine, and aluminum-foil” tanning method, or as he called it, systematic abuse of our bodies.  We quite liked him.

So, just the other day we took ourselves to our brand new skin doctor.  I’d already decided that she wouldn’t be as kind to our scaly skins as our old one, but I was wrong.  A young, attractive, knowledgeable person, she gave us a good once over and sent us on our way.  Come back in a year, she said.  

That doesn’t mean I appreciated the invasive nature of the questions that were asked of us to become part of her practice.

As a breast cancer patient, I’m accustomed to lots of scrutiny.  I freely tell my cancer-related docs about my bad habits, family history, genetic structure and so on.  Those questions and my answers are definitely “need-to-know.”

But, we’re talking skin here.  Some red bumps, a few freckles, age spots and the occasional mole. Sure, the doctors need a little history but I wasn’t sure why they wanted/needed to know if I’d ever had 4 alcoholic drinks in one day

I had the option of clicking “No”. Complete and total denial.  Never did.  Never would have. 

But then again maybe once upon a time I did, in fact, have 4 drinks in one day.  If I did, I don’t remember.  Perhaps, I blacked out the memory.  Perhaps I, myself, blacked out after all that booze. And, exactly why would I ever admit to either one of those things?  The four-drinks-in-one-day thing or that I blacked out?   Further, why would I confess it to a computer whose stuff goes into the great blue cloud?  And stays there?  For ever and ever?   Where my great-great-grandchildren could read it some day?   Not that they’d care but still.

I really like our new derma-doc.  So, I’m not totally bent out of shape about this.  But if ever there were a NOYB question, it was that one. 

Image thanks to emojipedia.org